Pubdate: Wed, 11 Mar 2009
Source: Manitoban, The (CN MB, Edu)
Copyright: 2009 The Manitoban Newspaper Publications Corporation
Contact:  http://www.themanitoban.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2665
Author: Dean Jensen
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

DRUGS, DRUGS, DRUGS: SOME ARE GOOD, BUT THEY'RE ILLEGAL

Stephen Harper's Conservative government is one step closer to 
passing legislation designed to curtail gang activity in Canada. The 
proposed mandatory jail time and increased mandatory minimum 
sentences set out in Bill C-14 are poised to attack drug trafficking 
and the increasing number of gang related murders and drive-by 
shootings in international drug hot beds like Vancouver, B.C..

"Our message to potential offenders is clear: if you sell or produce 
drugs, you will face jail time," Federal Justice Minister Rob 
Nicholson told the media in late February. The list of proposed 
changes to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act includes a minimum 
one-year sentence for the sale of drugs such as marijuana in 
connection with organized crime, a mandatory two-year sentence for 
dealing drugs such as cocaine, heroin or methamphetamines to "young 
people" and a two-year mandatory sentence for running large-scale 
marijuana grow-operation, the CBC told me.

These proposed changes to drug laws come at the heels of similar 
enhancement of penalties to crimes involving gang violence, and sees 
the Harper government making good on its campaign promises to "get 
tough on crime." I still have a headline from that particular piece 
of junk mail, sent out last October. "Keep junkies in rehab and off 
the streets," it says. I have it tucked into a picture frame below my 
signed photo of Mr. Harper to remind anyone rolling joints off it of 
the kind of people we have running the show in Ottawa these days.

These amendments make good of the Conservatives' promise to "get 
tough" on gangs in the public print, but do they really deliver the 
goods? While few in Parliament will have the intestinal fortitude to 
actually vote against the bill, criticisms abound as to its lack of 
incentives towards the prevention of crime in the first place.

Winnipeg resident Frank Hermon, who spent time in gangs and jail 
before returning to school and distancing himself from his troubled 
past, spoke to the CBC when the legislation was announced. He said 
that while the new laws might (key word) help, the problem is in no 
way going to be solved by simply adding jail time to a sentence. "You 
really don't care when they send you to jail," he said. "Most of your 
friends are already in jail anyway."

A good friend of mine stopped by my house this past September with a 
(then) recent issue of Macleans magazine featuring a cover story on 
the B.C. drug industry to show me. As we partook in the buds of said 
industry, he (being a student of commerce) directed my attention to 
the numbers involved.

Now, the fact that B.C. is home to a massive drug economy was news to 
neither of us: I was born in Victoria and spent the bulk of my youth 
in Dawson Creek, and both us had spent time in the Interior.

During my time there and since, I have met many people who have been 
employed "in the industry" in one-way or another. Hell, I work in a 
head-shop, so technically I work in the drug industry, though safely 
on the legitimate, fully legal, taxpaying periphery. I understand 
that many people enjoy drugs, and I know these people come in every 
single shape, size, age, class, race, creed, whatever, and enjoy a 
wide range of drugs, both fully legal and flagrantly illegal.

Possessed, as we were, with a basic understanding of economics and 
"the drug industry," the numbers Macleans presented were, frankly, 
staggering. A brief example from that article reads, "a 2005 RCMP 
report found that if marijuana production was factored into 
provincial accounts, B.C.'s trade surplus would jump 230 per cent to 
$8.6 billion." In the midst of a global economic meltdown, billions 
of dollars a year are moving about completely untaxed in British 
Columbia alone. Sounds like a Conservative's paradise!

"The bottom line is there's no question this is a multi-billion 
[dollar] industry," Darryl Plecas, a criminology professor at the 
University College of the Fraser Valley, told the magazine, and the 
industry goes far deeper than drive-by shootings and gangsters 
slinging dope. As in any other industry with fierce competition, the 
gangs of the today are innovative, sophisticated organizations who 
are not only keenly aware of "the bottom line," but are prepared to 
fight and die for it. And yes, physically not figuratively.

"This is a business, but it's a business with no rules, no morals, no 
ethics and the main tool is a handgun or a submachine gun," says 
Supt. John Robin, a member of the B.C. integrated gang taskforce in 
the Macleans article, articulating the view of the police and, 
evidently, the state.

In a recent article for Vancouver's The Tyee, Rafe Mair explains that 
if you want to stop gang violence, take the profit out of being in a 
gang. How do gangs make profit? You guessed it: drugs. Mair argues 
that drug prohibitions such as we have today are providing an ideal 
environment for gangs to thrive. There has always existed a huge 
market for drugs, and no legislation will change that. During the 
failed prohibition of alcohol in the United States during the 1920s, 
American gangs made a quite literal killing (i.e. profit), supplying 
illegal liquor to drinkers (i.e. the market).

Gangs today are doing the exact same thing, only with a global market 
for illegal drugs of all kinds. The unending war on drugs we find 
ourselves waging today is proving no more effective than the 
teetotalers' war on booze was, and is certainly more deadly. With the 
battle against illegal drugs taking place on a world stage, billions 
(if not trillions) of dollars and countless lives are wasted fighting 
an unwinnable war ever year.

It is often left unsaid, or taken for granted, that there is also big 
business in maintaining prohibition by force, a business the state 
has invested heavily in. Millions of dollars are spent a year in 
countries across the world, providing employment to thousands of law 
enforcement professionals, lawyers, judges, jurors, jailors, doctors, 
bondsmen, politicians and others who, like professional criminals, 
earn their wages off the suffering and misfortune of others. The 
existence of one class is reliant on the continued criminalization of 
the other. In this there is no hint of justice, but rather a positive 
feedback loop with only one just solution: the end of drug prohibition.

Dean Jensen enjoys many drugs, and almost exclusively legal ones.
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